It was the year I dyed my hair and turned it into fire.
We shared a half bottle of something rot gut but good.
We huddled in the back corner of a dark room
and counted the stubble on our legs, the places
we’d already ceded to roundness, the ones we’d given up
to the devil. You warned me of the mortal dangers
of redheads. I can’t weep for you and I don’t remember
what your dangers were, only it wasn’t two years
before I dyed my hair back to black (a fear of burning.)
I’d had enough of being dangerous or in danger
all the time. Had enough of not being able to tell
the difference. I remember I worried you — didn’t have
a choice. I won’t weep for you.

It was four years before I shaved my head altogether
then hid my razor and flushed the small bottle of pills
I’d taken to keeping just in case. There was the year
I avoided you in the halls of cheap hotels for fear
you’d see my eyes; how bloodshot their accusations,
how long I’d been crying in private. You snuck up on me.
You pushed your fat thumbs into the small of my back,
prodded at my posture (still straighter than expected.
How it must not have been too much for me then.)
I think you offered me a cigarette, offered me a drink,
told me raunchy stories about my lover’s nomad cock.
I remember the gut gurgle of laughter, a sharp lesson
on breaking points. I have more than I realized.

You were a paragon of the virtues of the red dress,
the holy righteousness of the deep V, the honesty
of my ass in a low slung pair of jeans. You taught me
the value of dragging my saunter back from skyscraper
roof tops, brought me back to a belly laugh when all I wanted
was to become a tight nut of sorrow. I won’t weep for you.
You still remind me of thunder. There was always a bottle
in the dark for us, at a reading, in a hotel lobby, or
damn near naked some place we should never have been.
You weren’t ever trying to be a good girl. I’ve been
coming to terms with my avalanche from grace.
You don’t want me to weep for you. There was the night
you pointed out your lovers, one by one, and we giggled
into our bourbon. I told you what was wrong with each of them:
their dance moves, their back hair, their arms
so hollow without you.